My husband and I made this Paleo-esque lasagna thing tonight and I have to share. I say Paleo-esque because we added Ricotta cheese, so it's not purebred Paleo. Warning: we are not even remotely expert chefs, so the measurements are, um, free form, kind of.

The sauce:

One white onion, diced and sauteed in a large saucepan with a splash of olive oil, until the onions are clear.Add 4 pounds of medium tomatoes, cut into small, thin slices, so they cook down easily.Add 3 small-medium bunches of broccoli, diced into tiny pieces.Add one handful of fresh oregano, diced.Add 6 cloves of garlic, diced.Add 3, 28-ounce cans of whole peeled tomatoes.Use a hand mixer to gently blend these ingredients in the saucepan.Add one pound of cooked lean ground sirloin, and 3/4 pound of cooked ground pork. Note-I cooked the meat with one onion, and separated the juice when the meat was fully cooked.

Simmer on low heat for 30-40 minutes. I added two tablespoons of corn starch (another small cheat) to thicken up the sauce.

The Layering Process:

Pre-heat oven to 400 degrees.Layer the following into a baking pan, in this order:Thinly sliced eggplant.Sauce.Eggplant.Ricotta cheese.Spices. (we used dried oregano, basil, and thyme).Sliced almonds. (the left field ingredient).Repeat above for one more round, or until you reach the top of your pan.Then, Drizzle some Sriacha sauce on top.Bake at 400 degrees for one hour.

This was a complete mad scientist experiment and it was delicious! Obviously, you could remove the Ricotta, or add a different vegetable. We talked about using crushed walnuts and one layer of sliced tomato, or using almond flour as a top crust. Speaking of which, has anyone here tried making Paleo Chicken Parmigiana with almond flour or flax meal? We might try this next week.

I saved a portion of the sauce to serve with fresh spinach, chard, and kale.Enjoy!

5 comments:

Sounds like fun, putting together a crazy lasagna experiment. Maybe we'll throw something together over the holidays.As for Chik Parm, I found the almond meal stuck to the chicken and sauteed up quite nicely and that's halfway through this recipe for Chicken Parmesan from the Almond Flour Cookbook. Not that you need it since you and the hubby will make some ChickParmenstein anyway.